Why Children Are Removed From Their Homes--for Better Or Worse

February 22, 1998|By Gail Vida Hamburg. Special to the Tribune.

"We've all heard about children falling through the cracks, but the truth is, children don't fall through cracks, they fall through fingers," says Marc Parent, a former child- abuse investigator in New York.

Three of them, Sara Cohen, 5, Laura David, 10, and Jason Taylor, 13, are like those author Richard Wexler describes in "Wounded Innocents," children hurt by child-abuse investigations. The girls' experiences are like something out of "1984," George Orwell's novel in which children are taken from their parents and where love relationships are forbidden. Jason's case is more like something from "The Trial," Franz Kafka's novel about inscrutable agencies and unfathomable courts that persecute an innocent man. Caseworkers, however, defend their work by citing a fact that has no parallel in fiction: Too many American children are victims of child abuse.

In 1996, according to the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, allegations of abuse involved 3,126,000 children; 969,000 were confirmed as victims of child abuse or neglect. An estimated 1,046 children died from abuse or neglect; 858 of them did not see their fifth birthday, 450 of them did not see their first.

Sensational cases and zero tolerance for child abuse have combined to produce a clamor from the public, the media and from legislatures for state agencies to punish abusers and protect the children. But the unattainable goal of a nation free of child abuse, caseworkers and their critics agree, has caused too much investigation of parents and children.

To fight abuse, child-protection agencies have evolved into hulking bureaucracies. In 1993, all states received funding for child-welfare intervention and related services under the federal Family Preservation and Support Service Program. Appropriations grew from $60 million in 1994 to $900 million for 1998. Since 1994, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has grown into a veritable brontosaurus, with more than 4,117 employees, 574 investigators and a $1.4 billion budget.

Child abuse has spawned its own industry, with private agencies, foster homes, group facilities for special-needs children, therapeutic services and parenting educators all sharing in federal and state funding.

More than 60 percent of caseworkers in a Florida study said they were unable to serve children in real danger because minor neglect reports consumed too much of their time. They also complained about the amount of time they spend on paperwork for obviously false allegations of child abuse.

Critics say aggressive investigations by child-protection agencies often violate the constitutional rights and civil liberties of parents and children, and caseworkers frequently decide abuse exists even when there is insubstantial or no evidence. Caseworkers respond that negative media coverage of sensational agency failures makes them overly cautious, removing children from homes when they have any doubts about the children's safety.

"I can't win," says C.P., a caseworker with DCFS who asked that his name not be used. "If I leave kids and they get hurt, you (the media) hang me for it. If I remove kids to make sure they're safe, I'm disrupting kids' lives."

Unwarranted intervention is driven by a general misconception about how widespread child abuse really is, says Carolyn Kubitschek, president of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, founded in 1991 at Harvard Law School by leading children's advocates. "We ought to be looking at whether the incidence of child abuse is so great that we can afford to suspend the constitutional rights of people in order to address the problem."

According to 1995 census figures, 4 percent of the 76,376,000 children in the U.S. were reported victims of abuse and 1.26 percent were confirmed as victims. Of 19,591,000 children under 5, only .004 percent died of child abuse or neglect. In statistical terms, only a small percentage of parents or caregivers abuse their children. Yet the general perception is that child abuse is an epidemic, Kubitschek and others say, and that caseworkers need to closely monitor and investigate families.

In Illinois, the term "child abuse" includes emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, substantial risk of harm and death caused by abuse. Medical and physical evidence, from fractures and bruises to burns and human bites, help investigators determine abuse. To determine substantial risk of harm, investigators must estimate possible future risk to a child's safety based on previous behavior, new allegations and what the caseworker sees during an interview. In 1995, Illinois introduced the Child Endangerment Risk Assessment Protocol (CERAP) to train more than 4,000 caseworkers, and in 1996 the rate of reinjury dropped by 24 percent.